Wednesday 14th April 2010

Message from an adviser...

"The constant call for a higher standard rather accepts the regulatory myth that existing standards are low, which they are not. Less than 3% of FOS complaints testify to this truth. Our clients love us and hate the banks and yet it is the banks that are not regulated.

It is the banks that have brought UK plc to its knees!

What gets my back up is the constant mantra for higher standards. Chris Cummings (of the Association of Independent Financial Advisers - AIFA) should know that there is no evidence that higher standards for IFAs are needed or that the consumers are prepared to lose 10,000 IFAs, perhaps even their own IFA, as the price for this madness.

Chris might also take note that so called higher standards have not saved the legal profession. The Legal Complaints Service (LCS) now handles over 300 calls a “day” on a range of legal complaints. Three year's of degree study, one year at the Common Entrance Exam and two year's articles have done nothing to stem the rise of consumer complaints. No wonder the FOS wanted to get their hands on the management of legal complaints!

Should we now have an exam on the all the exams and levels available, perhaps with a module on time management i.e. how to study, run a business, make a profit and pay the fees for the lack of banking supervision? Perhaps we could also have a broom applied by the regulator to a certain part of the IFA anatomy in order to sweep the floor at the same time?

Part of regulation is consumer protection. The other part is maintaining the profitability of those regulated so that the consumer retains choice. RDR will kill the consumer choice by starving him/her of independent advice and in turn force him/her onto a diet of tied bancassurer with all their substandard, often mis-sold products. This may or may not be the agenda of a bank run FSA but it will surely be the end result.

This is not anti regulation - the regulation itself is anti regulation and anti consumer and when it is all done and dusted and the independent sector is as dead as a dodo you mark my words it will make not a jot of difference to the protection of the consumers who will still be mis-sold, but this time by the banks who will then enjoy a monopoly to exploit!

The regulator has failed every test put before them. It is freedom of choice and competition that protects the consumer - not the regulator. The IFA community is suspicious when they see an "impartial regulator" displaying partiality without substance for such an unworthy method of distribution, the banks - the main beneficiaries of an RDR led contraction."

SIMON MANSELL TEMPLE BAR IFA LTD

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